Divine concentration

When we speak about sound practices, we almost always speak about what we receive. Calm. Bliss. A sense of settling. Something arrives, and we let it in.

Vedic chant works the other way round. The mantra asks. It asks for your eyes, your ears, your breath, your voice, your memory, everything you use to perceive anything at all. And the giving is what you receive. That exchange is the practice.

I want to say at the outset that this is not a competition. Other sound practices are beneficial, and they suit different people at different times. I make the distinction only so that a person can choose what fits, and know what he or she is choosing.

What is asked before you can begin

In most devotional sound practice there is little or no Sanskrit instruction. Perhaps a deity name, an oṃ at the start and a namaḥ at the end. There is no notation to read, no fixed intonation, no grammar. The words themselves can shift, and you may bring your own vocal imagination to them. You can arrive today and take full part.

Participation does not require prior training.

Vedic chant asks the opposite. Study comes first. There are the sounds of Vedic Sanskrit, more of them than in the classical Sanskrit taught at university, and each one has a place in the mouth where it is made. There is intonation, and it is fixed, not left to preference. There is sandhi, the grammar of what happens when sounds meet. And there is the text itself, which has to be held in memory, exactly, and corrected by someone who is trained in this tradition.

It is closer to learning a language

Life has moved me within India and then between countries, and each move meant acquiring a language I did not grow up with. Anyone who has done that knows what it costs: attention, repetition, correction, and time.

Learning Vedic mantra asks for the same kind of work. It is the acquisition of a language, and the language has rules.

Consider French. You may decide to speak your own version of it, with your own pronunciation and your own word endings. Nothing bad will happen to you. But no one who knows French will agree that you are speaking French. Someone who knows no French at all may well tell you it sounds beautiful, and even ask to learn it from you.

The same holds for a mantra that is sung to a tune. There may be real enjoyment in it, and other benefits too. It is simply not the practice of Vedic mantra, which is defined by varṇa, svara, mātrā, balam, sāma and santānaḥ. There is an established framework for the recitation of Vedic mantras.

ekāgratā

There is a word in Sanskrit for what this practice asks: ekāgratā, a single point of focus. Nothing in your vision, nothing in your hearing, nothing in your senses that lies outside the object of perception.

This is what the mantra is asking for when I say it asks for everything. Give me your eyes. Give me your ears. Give me your breath, your voice, your prāṇa. Give me everything you use to perceive anything, and give it to me.

dhī, and the question of where to place your attention

There is a root in the mantric language of the Veda from which many words are formed: dhī. It is thought that is directed and held in one place. A river of thought, with a direction, flowing towards the truth and led by it. dhīmahi in the Gāyatrī mantra comes from this root.

People often ask me what they should be thinking about while reciting the Gāyatrī mantra. Where should awareness rest? On the navel? Between the eyebrows? Should there be a mudrā?

The question is understandable, but it is misplaced. The mantra is a prayer to Savitṛ, the impelling aspect of the sun, and what it asks is that our thoughts be moved towards the truth. We are already saying, in the mantra itself, please move my thoughts, I cannot do this on my own. Having asked that, it makes little sense to then take charge of where the mind should sit.

When you place a cup on a table, the cup does nothing in order to be held. There is no negotiation with the table, no contract. The table holds the cup. It is the same with the truth held in the mantras. You do not have to work in order to be held by the truth. Alignment is enough, and the recitation is the alignment.

So stay in the sound. Let the thoughts come to one place.

adhyayanam: the sound is the offering

The process of learning Vedic mantra is called adhyayanam, from adhi and ayana. ayana is movement, going. adhi is that which is guided, under instruction. So adhyayanam is guided movement, and the mind is what moves.

The method itself is humble. The teacher recites a small portion. The students repeat it twice. Then the teacher spends time on alignment: you missed an aspirated sound here, this syllable is on a high note and should be low, this sandhi has not happened, this conjunct has not been held.

That alignment is where the practice actually lives, and it is not call and response. In call and response the leader calls and the group follows, and one may or may not be taught how a sound is made. In adhyayanam we stop constantly. We correct. The feedback is not personal opinion, it is grounded in text, in our case the Taittirīya Prātiśākhya, which sets out several hundred rules across its chapters, gathered under those six categories.

Adhyayanam is the oldest error-correcting technology I know of.

The rules are not there to make rules

Every rule is also a check. Drift on svara and the contour breaks. Get the mātrā wrong and the duration is audibly off. The rules exist so that the mantra keeps its integrity as it passes from one generation to the next, which is how the ṛṣi who heard it is honoured. What was revealed is what is transmitted.

That is worth remembering when the corrections feel heavy, and they do feel heavy at the start. The irony of blissful mantras irritating you in the first weeks is real.

The mantras were already saying all of this

None of what I have written here is my own theory about the mind. It is sitting in the mantras, and has been for a very long time.

Take the Śiva Saṅkalpa mantras, thirty-nine of them, recited before the worship of Śiva. saṅkalpa is usually translated as resolve or resolution, which is loose. kalpa is imagination, and with sam it becomes the perfected imagination, the vision that is fully aligned with the truth.

The tradition asks who is eligible to worship Śiva, and after all the reasoning it arrives at an uncomfortable answer: only Śiva. Only that steady mind understands what it is looking at. So the devotee, who is always a little cheeky, says: then I will join my saṅkalpa to Śiva’s saṅkalpa, and worship from there. Thirty-nine times the refrain returns: tan me manaḥ śiva saṅkalpam astu, let this mind of mine be of the resolve of Śiva.

One of these mantras states the problem before it prays about it. The mind goes far off while we are awake, and just as far while we sleep. In sleep I cross continents and populate my dreams with people. Awake, I do the same thing. The ṛṣis knew this. A wandering mind is not a modern invention, and it is not our private failing.

Another says something that should change how we speak to ourselves. The mind is where ṛk, sāman and yajus are established, and in which the awareness of all beings is woven. The Veda lives in the mind. How can such a mind be reprimanded? It is worthy of worship.

The śānti mantras say the same thing in a different key. They are not primarily about world peace. They are mantras of alignment. Let me hear what is auspicious. Let my eyes not prevent me from seeing what is true. Let inner vision open. ṛtaṃ vadiṣyāmi, satyaṃ vadiṣyāmi: I shall speak ṛta, I shall speak satya.

And there is one I love: vāṅ me manasi pratiṣṭhitā, mano me vāci pratiṣṭhitam. My speech is established in my mind, my mind is established in my speech. Each stands on the other. What I say and what my mind is doing are not to be in conflict.

Read them together and a pattern appears. These mantras are about what to do with the mind, and they ask for a mind that is undistracted and aligned. Adhyayanam is the method that produces exactly that mind. The prayer and the practice are asking for the same thing.

Why the mind wanders

It is karmic. Attention runs along grooves that are already cut. We arrive with a blueprint, and the mind moves the way the blueprint says it moves.

This is not a personal failing, and being able to focus is not a personal achievement either. But karma is not fixed, and sādhana is where we have some input into it. Mantra practice as vācika sādhana is difficult to sustain, and that difficulty is the point: consistent practice cuts a new groove. There is a term for it, nava śabda saṃskāra, a new sound pattern laid down in place of the old one.

It is hard, and there are no shortcuts

If I could practise for you, I would. I would fast-track every student straight to concentration. The ṛṣis were cleverer than that and left no shortcut, so each of us works his or her own way there.

What the practice requires is a teacher, feedback, a text, a phonetic guide, the support of a lineage, and dīrghakāla, long time without breaks. Above all it requires self-effort, which is the part no one can do on your behalf.

What it is not: singing, accompaniment by harmonium or other instruments, a concert idiom. It is adhyayanam, and it is done for its own sake.

What you are left with

Everything is at work in this practice. Listening, voice, breath, memory, attention. Nothing of you is left out. This is not relaxation, and I would not describe what follows a session as relaxation either. It is focus, and a kind of illumination, and a mind that was scattered arriving at steadiness.

For me this is simply prayer. Divine concentration is my chosen modality of prayer, and it has been the most transformative thing in my life.

The mantra does not hand you that mind. You practise your way to it.

Where to begin

The live Foundation Course is where the serious study starts. It is a structured initiation into the tradition: tonal exercises, the sounds of Vedic Sanskrit, and six mantras learned properly, with their intonation and their grammar. Each week you record your recitation and send it to me, and each week you receive individual feedback on your own voice before the next class.

It is also the starting point for everything else. I ask every student to complete it before studying anything further with me, because all of it rests on what is built there.